ARISS Contact with Scouts from Blackland Prarie Elementary School made July 4th 2008.

Audio File: 

Space Station contact_small.mp3

NASA has set target launch dates for the eight space shuttle missions in 2009 and 2010 that are expected to be the fleet's last.

The pre-retirement schedule for the shuttle has 10 remaining flights, including missions already scheduled for Oct. 8 and Nov. 10 of this year.

The plan is to replace the shuttle fleet with the Orion craft, which is being built and tested now.

But first, seven assembly flights are slated to complete construction on the International Space Station, with an additional two contingency flights planned for completion before the end of the fiscal year 2010.

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NASA has awarded Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems Inc. in Houston, a one-year contract extension valued at $42 million to provide integration services for cargo delivery to and from the International Space Station.

Lockheed Martin has held the station's cargo mission contract since January 2004. The one-year extension will bring the total value of the contract to $338 million.

The contract provides cargo packing for delivery to and from the space station, consisting of pressurized and unpressurized science and logistics carriers, assembly hardware and crew support. It also involves determining the most efficient way to pack the cargo, verifying the adequacy of the integrated carriers, packing the pressurized cargo into sub-carriers and returning the cargo to the providers once it returns to Earth. The contract also provides sustaining engineering for NASA carriers.